Oil at $115 a barrel: What now?

The Associated Press

What will the price of oil mean at the pump?

Featured Topic | Posted 20 weeks 2 days ago

The price of oil reached new record highs this week -- driven in part by a weakening dollar -- alarming drivers and consumers of just about everything else. Why is oil getting so expensive? Will anything bring the cost back down? And how will we live if it doesn't?

Ben likes: More drilling, please

Deroy Murdock

How much more pain must Americans endure before our masters in Washington let oil companies punch a few holes in the Alaskan tundra? Must we shiver pennilessly in the dark before we may extract new domestic petroleum deposits? Or shall we simply keep buying $114 barrels of oil from people who want us dead?

In case Congress missed the news, four U.S. airlines have gone broke during this month alone. Frontier declared bankruptcy, but will continue flying. Even worse, Aloha, ATA, and Skybus blamed unaffordable fuel as they grounded their jets. Aloha said sayonara to 1,900 employees, NBC News reports. ATA’s demise destroyed 2,200 jobs, while Skybus sacked 450 workers, atop the 80,000 positions lost across the economy as unemployment spiked from 4.8 percent in February to 5.1 in March.

Will we finally grow up and harness our resources, or will we childishly weep over imaginary threats to wildlife, dispatch supertankers of cash to the Middle East, and watch our petrodollars sponsor bomb belts and exploding aircraft? Merely asking this question illustrates how desperately this nation needs adult supervision.

Joel likes: Peak oil?

Kevin Drum/Political Animal

Over the past few years Russia has been a relative bright spot on the oil scene, expanding its production by over a million barrels per day between 2002 and 2007. But it looks like Russia is now due to join Norway, Mexico, and the UK as countries that have hit their peak and are about to go into decline.

It's true that both the Saudis and the Russians have megaprojects due to come online over the next year or two, so it's not as if they're just twiddling their thumbs. Overall, though, oil at $100 a barrel sure doesn't seem to be spurring the kind of additional production you'd think it would. It's almost as if there's no net additional production to be had.